


Break the Spell

by thebriars



Series: familiars and newfound love [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ace!Rey, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cat!BB-8, M/M, actually beta'd for once what, familiar!bb-8, fluff and a little bit of angst, its minor I swear, its there but you have to squint, magic!poe, magic!rey, very self indulgent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-28
Updated: 2018-02-28
Packaged: 2019-03-25 00:28:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13822650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebriars/pseuds/thebriars
Summary: Finn often found her leaning precariously far over the street below, one hand tight around the railing of the fire escape and the other stretched out the sky, hair dripping sweet rain on her face. She'd throw him a grin over her shoulder, brilliant and confident, and invite him out into the storm.---it's a self indulgent stormpilot au with magic and cats and only a tiny bit of angstalso no actual spell breaking except in the metaphorical sense





	Break the Spell

**Author's Note:**

> some background info: some people are elementals, and some of those elementals have familiars. Rey is a water elemental bc fuck the desert and Poe is an air elemental bc planes. BB-8 is Poe's familiar. also, the only trait that really pops up from either of these is that Poe can sense people bc changes in the air or whatever. 
> 
> this is not a super developed au so don't shoot me if it's patchy pls 
> 
> beta'd by the lovely human I will refer to as Otter. thanks Otter, you're the best.

The rain was a novice to Rey; growing up in the barren and sun-scorched desert of Arizona had its downsides when it came to experience with New York's wide array of weather.

Finn often found her leaning precariously far over the street below, one hand tight around the railing of the fire escape and the other stretched out the sky, hair dripping sweet rain on her face. She'd throw him a grin over her shoulder, brilliant and confident, and invite him out into the storm.

_"Come on, it's beautiful, come out here with me."_

He would smile and shake his head, leaning against the frame of the window she used to reach the rusted iron steps.

The rain made him think of Rey now, fresh and beautiful and startlingly sharp. And, now, feet brushing through a sheen of water on pavement, he felt her presence around him.

Rey had told him once that the suspiciously obvious lack of her element in Arizona (besides being a cruel damper to her abilities) had left her lonely. The rain seemed to keep him company now as well, and the city glistened in the midst of a storm. He felt Rey's hand on his shoulder, pushing him to the alley on his left, between the bookstore with the blue pot of flowers and the bike repair shop.

He'd only ever perused each shop casually- had never gone there on a mission and had never left with anything but an experience that would be lost to time. Finn had certainly never gone down the alley between the stores, and yet he felt as though he were following a well worn path.

Past a looming green dumpster, past a few sodden cardboard boxes, past an empty paint can. There, under the eave of a back door, orange and small. A cat, shivering in the rain. Finn let down his umbrella in order to reach for it, Rey's hand on his, especially now, out in the rain.

The flash of light was intense. Finn yelped and stumbled back, hand curling back to his body and his shoulder hitting the opposite wall of the alley. Pain ricocheted though his arm and down his back, and Finn panted, eyes wide on the hissing creature across the way.

A familiar, clearly. The cat fit every description, but where was her master? Familiars stuck close to their humans- always on guard for opposition and always ready to protect or something. Finn was never really sure what there was to protect someone from, especially when that someone had some form of magic ability of their own. Rey had thought about having a familiar many months ago, but had decided that Finn was enough of a protective roommate.

Nevertheless, Finn figured that Rey must have some sort of knowledge about familiars, considering the many evenings she had spent with her nose buried in dusty books or a laptop screen. He fumbled for his phone, cursing his damp fingers for slowing his route to Rey's contact.

"Hey, you need a ride? Storm looks bad and-," Rey started, picking up just as the first ring faded into silence. She sounded cheery, a little muffled, as if she were holding the phone against her shoulder while she cooked. Finn could hear the sound of a whisk against porcelain in the background.

"Actually, just advice. I'm only a few blocks away."

"Advice? On what?"

"Uh, familiars." Finn copied Rey's supposed position and held the phone between his ear and his shoulder, approaching the shivering cat once again.

"May I ask why?"

"I found one in the alley over by that bike shop- you know which one- and it's... well, alone? What do I do?"

Rey huffed, and the sound of hands brushing over an apron filled the silence. "Did it flash at you? I mean, if you touched it."

"Yeah, I think so."

And so the call went on and Rey got sidetracked on a childhood story about a neighbor's outdoor cat (Finn waited her out, but only because she sounded so wistful and he felt like cutting her off was a crime). But, eventually, Finn had coerced a cat into his jacket and was headed back down the sidewalk, past the bookstore and a bakery and an antique store.

\---

Having a familiar was Poe's saving grace. Growing up in a small town just west of the biggest center for magic on the continent didn't mean there were others like him. Poe had grown up sheltered by his mother, but then she was gone and...

He didn't think about that. At least, not until spring.

But Bee had been a savior since the day she walked into his life, tail high and eyes glowing in the dim shop. Finally, something from _his_ world. Something that Poe could see himself in.

Bee had been with him since he was eleven years old and she wasn't leaving anytime soon. If there was one thing Poe would be eternally thankful for, it was the aging process (or lack thereof) of familiars. At least Bee would always stick around.

Unlike Muran.

Poe had never, not even in the strangest of his midnight journal tangents, thought he'd be here.

And where was here? Here was standing on the steps in the rain, hands tight on the cold railing. Here was tasting the salt of tears and telling himself they were raindrops. Here was the spray of water from speeding tires and here was the lust for revenge, bubbling in his stomach and tightening his throat.

But Muran left despite his pleas and when Poe returned to the dry shelter of his apartment, Bee was gone too.

The floor hurt his knees when he fell.

\---

The door clicked open with a softness that characterized Finn in some strange way- timid, to say the least. Timid and yet perfectly welcome. Rey looked up from the oven, horrendously clumsy mitts clutching a quiche pan. She grinned as Finn unzipped his jacket to reveal the rest of a small, orange cat.

"Awww, I love her," Rey cooed, enticing a snort from Finn as she put down her quiche and crouched of the ground, arms outstretched. The cat steadily ignored her, causing another snort and a pout from Rey.

She watched Finn coax the familiar to him, grumbling good-naturedly at his success. It wasn't until the quiche was cut and Finn had hung his wet clothes over the curtain rod in the bathroom that Rey realized she had no fucking clue how to take care of a cat.

This much was said over dinner, with the cat poking suspiciously at the tuna Finn had found at he back of the pantry.

"Well, what do we need?" Finn drummed his fingers against the edge of the table, a nervous tick he'd had since they met and, Rey supposed, his rocky childhood in Maine.

She counted off on her fingers, searching every book and movie and show and friend's house in her memory. "Litter box, toys, bed, scratchy thing, food and water... I've heard something about 'no milk', but I'm not sure."

Finn nodded, shook his head, nodded again. "No clue."

"I figured."

\---

Jess offered him another glass, but Poe couldn't. Not that he couldn't drink anymore- no, not by a long shot- but that he has seen how his father woke up in regret and amplified pain every night he went out looking for Poe's mother. Poe tried to tell him that she was gone, gone, six feet under, but the craving for her and the subsequent craving for a night at the bar led to many Sunday mornings spent in tears on the couch.

Poe was _not_ going to end up in tears on the couch.

At least Jess understood. She sat with him, curled together on the ground with their backs up against the dishwasher, and didn't talk. For this, Poe was glad, for he was already fighting off an emotional breakdown and shittalking his boyfriend was not something he really wanted to do.

 _Ex_ -boyfriend, he was careful to remind himself.

Also, he couldn't find Bee.

Jess rubbed his back a little and let him nervously finger his mother's ring, secure around his neck, without any complaint. At least Poe had her.

\---

Several google searches and a WikiHow article or two later, Finn had a litter box and Rey had coaxed the familiar to trust her. At least, sort of. The cat seemed to be undeniably attached to Finn, which (according to Rey and the internet) was strange. Finn had no magic and yet the cat seemed wary of Rey instead of him.

Finn found himself curled in the corner of their couch, knees tucked up to allow the cat to nestle against his shins, paws kneading into his socks. Finn absently scratched the underside of the cat's chin, enjoying the soft purrs. Rey had been raving about a movie she'd seen with Kaydel and Finn had relented the other night. It was a Friday, after all, and the week had seemed like eons.

"Where's your human, huh?" Finn scratched the base of the familiar's ears. The cat purred louder and nudged Finn's ankles. Rey rose from where she'd been fiddling with the stereo and watched the pair for a moment. Finn felt her eyes on him but continued to watch the cat. The trio existed peacefully for a moment, nothing but the apartment and the storm and them.

\---

Jess had fired up her radio, blasting some obscure band and dancing around for a moment, pouting dramatically when Poe shook his head in response to her outstretched hand and the upbeat tempo.

He watched the storm and wondered if Muran was okay. Wondered if he cared. Did he ever care about Poe? Was he wondering, watching the storm, just the same?

Poe turned away and drew his knees up to his chest , curling tighter into the corner of the window bench. Jess' music turned to a softer tune, a quiet lull in the background. He watched the patterns of the water on the glass and hoped Bee was safe.

\---

The storm let up sometime in the night. Finn had headed to his room sometime before then, leaving Rey in peace on the fire escape. She never heeded his warnings about metal and lightning and such, but he knew she would be cautious all the same.

When he woke, it was to the dull thump of his journal hitting the floor. Finn shot up, startled, to find himself face to face with sparkling green eyes and a low grumble.

"Hey there."

The cat jumped from the nightstand to Finn's pillow, settling there and making it clear that drifting back to sleep was not an option. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and rose.

Rey was, as to be expected, in the living room. The coffee table was shoved haphazardly to the side of the room, leaving open space for meditation.

Finn had never understood the act- sitting still and silent for long amounts of time was never his forte. Not as if he was chatty- no, not even with Rey- but the stillness seemed stifling. Finn had a tendency to wake up after Rey was done, but in these rare moments where he caught her there on the floor, legs folded in some highly uncomfortable position, he relished it. It was intimate in some strange way.

She had described it as limbo before. A strange combination of hyper awareness and complete numbness. Everything was on fire and yet frozen. Finn figured that she used it to disappear into her mind.

He passed Rey by, leaving her to her thoughts, and ventured into the kitchen. Waffles sounded spectacular at the moment and Finn swore that there was a box of mix in some corner of the pantry.

Rey caught him on a chair, peering into the dim corners of the highest shelves.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Looking for pancake mix- ah, found more tuna."

"Thought you were looking for my cookie stash." Rey was unloading the dishwasher, somehow managing to fit three coffee mugs in one hand.

"I didn't know you had a cookie stash." Finn jumped down and pushed the chair back to the table, noticing the cat curled up on the makeshift pillow bead by the heater.

"Oops." Rey closed the dishwasher. "I think we used up the mix when Kaydel slept over. Wanna run down to the place on 6th and Elm?"

\---

Jess had graciously printed out a few dozen lost cat posters after Poe freaked out to her around two in the morning about the disappearance of his familiar. She used a picture from the back of her camera roll of Poe and Bee curled together on the window bench for "emotional leverage" and one Poe sent her of Bee's face. He very nearly had another breakdown a few hours later at the sight of them, neatly stacked on the kitchen table, and roused Jess soon after to put them out on light posts and in storefront windows. Poe had narrowed down Bee's location to this neighborhood.

It seemed that most of the shops in the neighborhood were closed at six-thirty in the morning on Saturdays, leaving Poe with extra posters and energy to stick them up a few streets over too. Jess yawned in his wake, occasionally commenting on other posters taped haphazardly around or things her infamously delirious coworker, Snap, said.

Five streets plastered in posters and a quick stop for coffee later, Poe had collapsed back in Jess's guest room. He didn't have the drive to go back to his apartment and Jess didn't have the heart to kick him out.

God, this was pitiful. Poe buried his face in his forearms and sighed.

\---

Rey practically vibrated with energy, swooping in for an impromptu hug before ricocheting off again, pointing out interesting things in storefronts and stupid advertisements on light posts.

"We saw them once- remember, in the park? God, the music sucked." Rey pointed to a poster advertising some rock band's performance the next night, but Finn was too focused on a poster beside it, in particularly better shape than the others.

Lost cat: Bee, familiar, orange with green eyes and a feisty personality.  
  
Finn made a strange gasping noise at the back of his throats and smacked Rey's shoulder to get her attention.

"I think that's our cat."

\---

Poe's phone buzzed against his thigh. He hardly felt like moving from his petulant face plant on the bed, but its strange insistence brought him to dig it out of his pocket. An unknown number: Poe moved to deny it, a habitual response to the big UNKNOWN printed across the screen, but the sudden thought of _my_ _posters_ stopped him.

"'ello." He sounded exhausted, even to his own ears, and most certainly to whoever was on the other end of the line.

"Um, hey, is this Poe?" A male voice, timid and yet sure.

"Yeah, yeah, what's up?" He pushed himself up from his pillows and rubbed the heel of his hand across his eyes.

"I think I have your cat."

\---

Finn had a date- no, a meeting, he had to remind himself. Rey had teased him about how long he and Poe talked. Much, much longer than necessary for a simple 'meet me here, I'll get my cat' warranted. And so what if Poe ended their conversation with 'it's a date'? It didn't mean anything.

So what if Poe was charming and cocky but humble and intelligent? And so what if that candid shot of him and Bee on the window bench was of the most beautiful man he'd ever seen? Rey had looked him up, but his Instagram was private and Finn thought it would be too stalker-ish to follow right away.

But, God, they'd talked about so much. From simple introductions to sneaky background checks and character assessments to full blown first date style queries, as if each man was trying to ween every last drop of information possible without being either too direct or shockingly personal.

Finn wondered if he was really as beautiful in real life as he was there in that picture, framed in light and happy. Probably not. Finn was definitely seeing things.

Of course, he could be wrong. Rey had acknowledged that Poe was indeed very handsome and that a was a feat all by itself.

"Listen, if this guy manages to charm me when we meet him, then I'll give you my blessing," Rey commented, watching over Finn's shoulder as he scoured Twitter for any sort of Poe Dameron: air elemental and former pilot with a love for plums and an orange feline familiar.

Finn snorted. "What sort of blessing?"

"I'll walk you down the aisle."

\---

Poe had snatched an outdoor table, trying to look casual. He had his nose buried in Jess' copy of Great Expectations in an attempt to appear scholarly and kept running a hand through his hair. The sky was in a sort of limbo between post-storm blue skies and brisk fall grays. Poe hoped it wouldn't rain again. Storms always unsettled him a little- huge disturbances in his perfect sense of the sky.

A ping from his phone alerted him to Finn's imminent arrival. Five minutes.

Poe couldn't fathom why he was so nervous. He had Finn had talked for far longer than necessary, but he'd shrugged off their chatter as Finn trying to make sure Poe wasn't a serial killer or vice versa. Jess had wiggled her eyebrows at him when he'd told her of his morning's new plan.

"Don't you think it's a little soon to be hopping back into it? You broke up with Muran, like, twenty-four hours ago."

 _Twelve_ , he reminded her, and bounced off to shower.

\---

Finn knew that the place was only up a few blocks, which made him jitter. Rey squeezed his hand and whispered something about making the guys fall over left and right without even trying. Finn laughed her off and tried to chill.

_You got this, Finn._

The voice in his head sounded suspiciously like Rey and Maz mashed together, but besides it's identity, it was cheering him on.

\---

Poe felt him before he saw him, moving towards the cafe with purpose. He glanced up from Dickens.

_Good god._

\---

Rey left them soon after Finn had deposited a squirming Bee into Poe's waiting arms, leaving them alone under her pretense of needing to grab a new stock of peppermint tea at the co-op down the road. Poe was fawning over Bee at the table, but Finn hung back, hands in the pockets of his jeans.

He knew it was awkward to stay but awkward to leave, and, besides, he wanted to get to know Poe Dameron.

The sky rumbled a little above him, bringing his attention to the clouds.

"Shit, I should get home," Poe demurred, sounding melancholy and apologetic. Finn began to agree, but Poe stumbled over his words into an interjection. "But, first, I was wondering if... if you'd like to... get lunch sometime?" It turned into a shaky question, contradicting Poe's entire aura.

Finn smiled. "I'd love to. Text me?" Another question.

"Of course. Also, thanks for taking care of Bee." Poe returned the smile tenfold, his dazzling grin bright in the sudden gray of the sky.

"No problem, Poe." Finn tasted the name on his tongue and it was sweet.

They lingered, even as fat rain drops began to fall fast and heavy, neither ready to break the spell.

And then Poe was tugging off his beaten leather jacket and swinging it over Finn's shoulders, excusing his actions quickly with _sorry, you seemed cold, and I have a ride coming soon anyway._

Finn smiled again and adjusted the collar, replying with _are you sure?_

"Absolutely."

"I'll catch you around, Poe."

\---

And then he was gone.

**Author's Note:**

> I got this idea while cat sitting and then it turned into... this. 
> 
> this is my first serious sw fic so please please please let me know what you think. I may be ace but I'm a hoe for comments <3


End file.
